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Half Life: Strong and well-casted performances of this award winning play by John Mighton

Author of the article:

Ottawa Citizen

Publishing date:

February 21, 2014 • 2 minute read

Reviewed by Iris Winston Photo by Maria Vartanova

The pattern of daily living changes as we grow older. At the core of Half Life are aging and the alterations within and around us.

In his 2005, award-winning drama, playwright/mathematician John Mighton draws and reshapes the lives of two generations of protagonists. Anna, an artist, and Donald, a scientist — both divorcees — approach the difficulties of caring for their aging parents from opposite ends of the emotion/logic spectrum, pitting happiness against safety in a seniors’ home environment.

Meanwhile, Anna’s father, Patrick, and Donald’s mother, Clara, see romance as their escape from the half lives they are living as alcohol and dementia cloud memory. They talk of their brief love affair during the war years. Their present connection matters more than the memory — perhaps reality, perhaps imagined — of the earlier romance. It is a key part of the pattern of the present.

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In the Ottawa Little Theatre production of Half Life, director Jim McNabb and a competent technical team combine the notions of shadows of the past, three-dimensional geometric designs and flowing visuals projected on screens. While this is a good idea in theory, they complicate rather than clarify, although the general sense of flowing between past and present makes perfect sense.

Many of the issues facing seniors and their caregivers are portrayed through the vignette format of Mighton’s script, from the reversal of roles between parents and children to various forms of elder abuse and the rejection of a simple solution that might keep dementia and hopelessness at bay for a while. (Mighton has said that the spark for his script was the romance and marriage of two wheelchair-bound seniors at the home where his mother lived for five years.)

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At times, the style of the script, as well as the irritating raising and lowering of screens, slows the action, but the mood is retained throughout. Linda Webster as Anna and Bryan Morris as Donald deliver strong and well-contrasted performances as their opposing attitudes to the romance between their parents develops. Dan Baran, as the elderly lover Patrick, is as convincing in his attachment to Clara as he is in his disregard for the rules. As Clara, Marjory Bryce has less impact, partly because she has chosen to speak in a halting fashion, seemingly to show that she is retreating into becoming an obedient child, as her memory dims and her world diminishes.

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Most of the remaining cast members have a clear idea of characterization and are effective in demonstrating such stereotypes as grumpy resident or grouchy nurse. Sadly, Barry Daley, who was quite compelling as the lead in Confessions of a Mad Drag Queen, has not eliminated that performance from his speech patterns and gestures as Rev. Hill.

In general, the strength of this production is the subject matter, as it focuses on key issues facing an aging population.